


Back to Counting

by R_Knight



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Cocaine, Gen, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Medication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 03:44:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21385549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R_Knight/pseuds/R_Knight
Summary: When it comes to Travis, Nolan is tripping over his own feet dumb-fuck levels of not smart. He is on his knees, against the wall of a public shower, at a teammates house levels of not smart.There are no excuses, just Travis and Nolan and all the not smart things they do to each other.
Relationships: Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick
Comments: 19
Kudos: 138





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**Author's Note:**

> In addition to the tags, the story depicts self-destructive behaviours and internalised ableism, as well as thoughts of self harm in a way that is treated as non-serious. This fic is very much taking from personal experiences, so obviously everything in the story is fake, and it's also very much not the universal experience of people with ADHD. 
> 
> Title from Haim’s Now I’m in it. Thanks Maia for your help.

**Nolan**

They’re in a club, at a bar. They’re eight drinks in and Travis is excited and eager and alert the way he always gets after disappearing into a bathroom for a minute on his own. 

He’s been doing that a lot lately. 

“It’s just like, okay, so the thing is -” 

“The thing is,” Nolan agrees, sipping his beer. 

“The thing. It’s like, I’m here, I’m ready to go, I’m _ winning _ this fight, you know? Like when you know you’re winning?” 

“For sure, dude.”

“And I’m not going to back down at that point, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Nolan says, nodding. Travis echoes the nod, fingers tearing at the label of his mostly empty beer. He’s sweating a lot - they both are, really, but Travis’ hair is sticking to his face and there’s a glowing sheen high on his cheeks that keeps catching the shifting lights of the club. His shirt is basically one big sweat patch too, it's pretty gross.

Mostly that just means that Nolan wants to lick him, which is unfortunately not the most disgusting thought he’s had about Travis recently. 

“So then I’m thinking, like he’s bigger, he’s tougher, I can admit it, okay. He’s gonna fuckin’ _ murder _ me if I can’t like, take him by surprise first, so then I-” 

So then Travis says _ fuck it_, because that’s always what he says before he makes a terrible decision, or even a mediocre one, and then he suckerpunches the guy, because of course that’s what he does. The story ends with Travis being dragged away by his friends before worse decisions are made, and honestly Nolan is pretty sure he’s heard this story before, or like, the hundred other variations of it that Travis has tucked in his back pocket for when he’s high. When he’s high and he’s full of life and he’s got a focus that isn’t there, usually, whenever he’s not on the ice. 

Nolan knows that it’s bad. Nolan knows that he’s also a terrible friend for never like, trying to suggest Travis maybe _ not _ do that, but then he sees the way that Travis settles into himself when he does - jittery, sure, eager and fast-talking but suddenly able to keep on subject, able to keep his head in the conversation the same way he can stay focused when he’s on the ice and pretty much never anywhere else.

It sort of gets on Nolan’s nerves, sometimes, the way Travis seems to forget everything important, forgets birthdays and meetings and doctors appointments if Nolan isn’t there to remind him. But then he’ll remember some stupid fucking detail about a conversation they had months ago. Like, Nolan makes an offhand comment about only liking strawberries when they’re in season, and Travis says _ you’re such a princess_, but then half a year later there’s strawberries left on their kitchen counter with no explanation. Just Travis’ sly grin over breakfast, and the way his eyes track the way the strawberry juice trickles down Nolan’s chin and his wrist. So whatever, it’s completely and totally fine, and maybe Nolan is just being a bitch, most of the time. 

Except he really really isn’t when it comes shit that actually affects their lives. Travis completely forgetting about leaving the oven on and the both of them coming back from a workout to smoke absolutely fucking _ billowing _ out of the kitchen windows, for example. Some tired looking firemen looking disappointed but not all that surprised when Travis claims the apartment as his. Thank fuck for sensitive alarms is all Nolan can say, because if their building burnt down because Travis thought he’d try his hand at baking with an attention span the approximate equivalent of a goldfish, he’d murder him. If Travis’ mom didn’t do it first, anyway. 

Sometimes Nolan feels like asking Travis what the fuck is wrong with him, that he’s like this. Calling his mom up and asking how _ she _ deals with his shit. Dealt with it, because Travis has been like this for at least as long as Nolan has known him, and if his stories from home are any indication, probably a lot longer. So yeah, every time Travis disappears for a little while and comes back with excitement and focus and an actual functioning memory, Nolan thinks: next time. 

He thinks: _ next time, I’ll say something. _He thinks and he thinks and he thinks, and ultimately, he doesn’t do anything at all. 

Travis is so uniquely himself, it’s hard to believe that there’s anything Nolan could do to stop him being - _ doing_, anything he wants to. Which is fucking _ stupid_, but when it comes to Travis, Nolan has already accepted that he’s not smart. He’s the _ opposite _ of smart when it comes to Travis. He is tripping over his own feet dumb-fuck levels of not smart. 

He is agreeing to whatever Travis wants; _ yes Travis yes Trav yeah bud _not smart. He is on his knees, against the wall of a public shower, at a teammates house levels of not smart. No excuses, just Travis and Nolan and all the not smart things they do to each other. And Nolan is dumb, sure, but he knows enough to know himself - that he won’t argue with TK, won’t tell on him or organise an intervention, and he hates himself for it almost as much as he hates TK, for making him this person. 

So he laughs. 

He says, “_ idiot_,” and, “you want another drink?” 

And when he nods, Nolan turns away from Travis’ sweaty, beatific face, and he gets them another drink. 

**Travis**

Travis wakes up with a sickly knot in his stomach, and its twin making home in the base of his skull. It takes him a second to orientate himself, realize that he’s wrapped around Nolan barnacle-style, face smashed into his naked chest, arms and legs wrapped around the rest of his, yeah, definitely naked body. Travis is sweating his ass off and their skin is stuck together with it, clammy and over-hot. He presses his forehead to Nolan’s sternum, thinks _ fuck _ and _ ouch _ and _ fuck _ again. 

He said some stupid shit last night, he thinks. Shit that he’s sure is making the rest of his teammates’ patience wear increasingly thin. But thank god Nolan was the only one around to hear it, the only one willing to stay out with Travis when he insists the party is still going, the night is still young. Insists on another bar, another drink, another bump. Well. Maybe not verbally. But Nolan isn’t stupid. He knows what Travis is doing when he disappears for the fourth time that night. But he never says anything. 

Never stops him. 

His whole body aches, and he doesn’t want to pull himself from the delusional bubble of him and Nolan and a shared bed, but the thick feeling in the back of his throat and nose forces him upright and to the bathroom. He feels slow. He always feels slow, in a way, slow and stupid and somehow too-fast for everything at the same time, but its especially bad the day after he does coke. Like, he gets what’s happening. Drug make you feel good, drug go away and crash make you feel bad. But the sickly stomach and the headache and the feeling like he’s pulled sandpaper through his sinuses are all things he can deal with. It’s the taste of being normal that kills him, after. Getting to feel like a real person, like he’s not stupid or forgetful or about as functional as a toddler on his own, and then having that snatched away - and with it all good feeling too - is almost enough to make him regret ever doing it in the first place.

Almost. But then there’s money, and there’s beer, and there’s shots; most of all there’s the allure of normality. The humiliating little creature in his brain that doesn’t want to feel stupid any more, doesn’t want to feel small and inferior. _ Got a chip on your shoulder little man_, another hockey player said once, Travis can’t remember who, but they were right, just not about why. Who gives a shit that Travis is short, like honestly - all the better to climb Nolan’s freaky long body with. It’s everything else that gets his hackles up. 

Every time a teacher said _ do better_, every time his mother looked at him like she couldn’t understand why he was like this, every time Nolan’s mouth went tight and his jaw tensed and Travis could just _ tell _ that he was holding back from calling him a fucking moron. Like Travis was too much of an idiot to even bother yelling at. A puppy that didn’t understand _ bad dog _ after it’d pissed on the carpet. Travis has every disappointed sigh, every silent stare stored away in his head ready to come back to him any time he _ really _ wants to feel like shit. If he fucks up during a game, if he reads shitty twitter comments about Nolan getting injured again, if he puts his foot in his mouth without meaning to - every time someone made that tightly-guarded little thing inside him feel shameful and hurt and aching comes flooding right back. It’s not good enough to just feel like shit for _ one _ reason. 

Which is where the coke comes in. It makes Travis feel good, happy. Makes him feel like a real person, like he’s not just pretending. Like he isn’t spending his life treading water, pretending he’s not fighting and kicking beneath the surface just to stay afloat. It's like he’s suddenly got the ability to remember things rather than have half of his memories circle a drain, fifty-fifty odds on whether he’ll ever keep them. He can tell a story without his brain pounding at him with ten other things he wants to say, can hold a conversation without pulling everyone else on an unwanted tangent. Without saying something stupid that’ll make him wince internally for days afterward. 

He knows it’s not smart. He knows what will happen if anyone official gets wind of it. If anyone other than Nolan, too fucking loyal for his own good, finds out. He can imagine the disappointment, and even that makes him want to curl over an imaginary ache in his belly, a kick to the stomach. Not just that, but he knows it’s not good for him, either. Knows that even carefully limiting himself to nights out isn’t going to work forever, not when he already needs more than when he first started to get the same effects, the taste of normality so fucking addictive. 

But he’ll stop. He saw Nolan’s face last night, saw the tightness around his eyes. He sees himself in the mirror, this morning. Pale and wrecked and in pain. Hurting for the person he wishes he could be, the person that’s always slipping between his fingers. But its not worth it, to have that so briefly, and at such a high cost. So he’ll stop. Last night was the last time for sure. 

When Travis finishes in the bathroom, Nolan is stirring, his toes curling where they stick out the bottom of the bed sheets, his faced squashed into a stupid grimace, annoyed at the light Travis is letting in from the bathroom. He hits the switch, closing the door quietly behind him. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, shuffling over to the bed. Generally they don’t do this - sleep together when they aren’t drunk or hockey-tired or with some other excuse. But it’s early, and Nolan is lifting his arm in Travis’ direction, his eyes still squinted shut. Dumb-looking and cute at the same time, not that Travis will ever tell him. He takes the offer for what it is though, even if it’s probably only because Nolan is still half-asleep, and slides back under the covers. He curls into the heat of him, pressing his cheek against Nolan’s chest and smiling, stupid, when Nolan wraps his arm around him. 

_ The last time,_ he promises himself, about the coke, sure, but this too: letting himself take a little more than what Nolan’s offering. Letting himself pretend, for a little while, that this is something more than what it is. Just one last time. 

**Nolan**

Hockey is good, and sometimes it's great, right up until it really, really isn’t. Travis is sort of the same. He’s funny and loyal and surprisingly thoughtful. He likes to be helpful. He’s fun to be around, and he’s very good at hockey. Besides all that, Nolan just - loves him. Stupidly. 

But then there are the times he’s so awful, so uncaring it’s like Nolan is concussed again, trying to put his thoughts together to form a cognisant thought, to understand, but never quite getting there. And maybe Nolan is the idiot for forgetting what he can be like, but it sure doesn’t feel like it’s his fault when Nolan’s parents come to visit, and they spend twenty minutes waiting for Travis to show up, then another thirty having an awkward dinner together while Nolan keeps checking his phone in case Travis has finally answered one of his, oh, fifty text messages. 

After, his parents go back to their hotel and he goes back to his place, thankful at least that he no longer has to endure their looks of sympathy and concern. He sends one last text to Travis: ** _asshole_**, before passing out cold in his bed. 

*

“_ Fuck _ \- shit, damnit,” is the second thing he hears when he wakes up, groggy and disorientated. The first thing he hears is the crash of something being knocked over in the hallway. He knows who it is before he even hears his voice. Nolan looks up at his bedroom door, notices that it’s closed where it was left open before. He sighs. He knows exactly how this is going to go. Travis will apologize, Nolan will still be pissed, and he’ll try to coldwall him, but end up giving in after like a day because Travis has this _ look _ when he does something bad, when he knows he’s been awful and Nolan’s disappointment is like the worst thing that could have happened to him. 

And honestly, he’s already resigned himself to it by the time he shuffles out of bed to open his door. A day of feeling bad is enough of a punishment for Travis. Maybe a day and a half, if Nolan really holds out. It’s more the embarrassment of it happening in front of his parents that’s making him angry, anyway. The fact that he’ll have to do damage control just to convince them Travis isn’t a shitty friend. So whatever, it happens, maybe not with other people but with Travis it does, and Nolan accepts that. 

But then he opens the door, and okay, it’s kind of funny to see Travis up on tip-toes, trying to rehang a picture on the wall outside Nolan’s bedroom that’s a little too high for him to do comfortably. But then he turns his head, caught out, and Nolan sees how big his pupils are. How sweaty he is, and it hits him all over again. Shit.

“I’m sor-” Travis starts, his eyebrows already furrowing, nervous and apologetic, but Nolan can’t stand it. Can’t stand to feel sorry for him. 

“Just - get the fuck out of my apartment Travis,” he says, cold. Tired. Tired of him, of this, of the both of them, stuck in this stupid fucking cycle of idiocy. Travis opens his mouth like he wants to say something, probably apologize again, but Nolan cuts him off. “I really don’t want to look at you right now Travis. I don’t want to make excuses for you anymore. Please.” 

It isn’t as harsh as he wanted it to be, and the _ please _ comes out without his meaning to, but it gets the point across. Travis shuts his mouth, hangs his head. Closes his eyes for a minute and sets the picture frame back on the floor, leaning against the wall. Then he leaves without another word.

Nolan sighs. He stares at the framed picture of a wolf he picked up from Walmart on a late night trip once with Travis, only half a joke. It stares back mockingly. 

**Travis**

Travis fucks up his foot. Karma, probably, but mostly just tripping over himself in a club. Which means that he’ll be out for at least a couple of weeks, until the team’s doctors are satisfied that he isn’t going to cause any permanent damage by skating on it. Travis is angry about it, sure, but it’s fitting if he’s honest. He’s already fucked up his friendship with Nolan and potentially his career with the coke, why not his body too? He’d always thought the thing that would finally ruin things with Nolan would be his neediness, his feelings. Nolan finally getting wind of them and deciding he didn’t want to be friends with a guy nursing a long-term crush on him. 

Bit of an oversight on his part, to think it would be something he did and not just his entire _ being _ that finally did it. Forgetting about the dinner they’d had planned for weeks, too busy out getting high on his own, letting himself into Nolan’s apartment to apologize and instead wrecking his shit, waking him up, showing himself when he shouldn’t have. Travis has always been like this, though. Always told on himself in the worst ways possible. Showed his hand and his heart and his guts to anyone that gave him even half their attention. 

His mom had worried about him when he left home, not just about his ability to take care of himself, but about the way he threw himself at friendships, careless and naive. Like if he gave all of himself over, showed every part of himself, made all of his bad habits and humiliating inadequacies a running joke, maybe that would be enough. For them to keep him. 

Sometimes it worked, but more often it didn’t, and people would get tired of him, and then he had to start all over again. It was stupid of him to think that maybe this time that wouldn’t happen. That maybe this time he’d be enough. 

*

There’s good news though: his foot isn’t as bad as they initially thought, so two weeks is looking more like the maximum, rather than the hoped-for minimum he’ll be out. Bad news is that he still has a week and a half of sitting alone in his apartment to endure. Mostly he’s been stewing in guilt, but as time passes and he starts to get restless, it isn’t just the guilt that’s getting to him. Travis has never been good at sitting still, never been able to shake that childish need to always be moving. Hockey does a good job at abating that, though. He’s either playing or practising or working out, and when he isn’t he’s at a club or he’s too exhausted from all of the above to care. 

Suddenly he’s without all of those things, and he doesn’t even have Nolan to distract him. And it’s not like he _ needs _coke or anything, especially not when he’s holed up alone and doing nothing for two weeks, but it’s the longest he’s spent sober since he started doing it. It’s the longest he’s gone since talking to Nolan, too.

So he calls his mom, facetimes his buddies from home, messes around on his playstation as long as it can hold his focus. Messes around on his phone when it doesn’t. Tries the playstation again. Orders in food. Contemplates breaking his fingers, just for something to do. Does it all over again. 

He cycles through it all, sometimes with the addition of showering or watching old episodes of _ Great British Bake Off. _He does it over and over and over, until he wants to suffocate himself with one of his fancy throw pillows Nolan had picked out on one of their trips to Ikea. And then he turns on the playstation again. 

*

Travis is idly googling how much pressure is required to break a little finger about ten days into his exile when he hears the sound of a key in his front door. Only two people have a front door key, and he wouldn’t put it past his mom to make a secret trip down from Canada just to make sure he was surviving not playing hockey - she knows how he gets - but it’s not his mom. It’s Nolan, freshly showered, hair still wet and curling a little at the base of his neck. He looks exhausted, probably because he’s just come from a game, but Travis thinks it’s probably got something to do with him too. It makes him feel sick, makes him want to babble apologies until Nolan understands that he didn’t mean to forget, didn’t mean to break his promises again and again. Never means to. 

But Nolan didn’t want his apologies before, so he probably doesn’t want them now either. Travis watches him kick off his shoes, drop the bag of takeout he’s got with him onto Travis’ coffee table next to a precarious pile of half-empty energy drink cans. 

Travis closes his eyes when Nolan sits down on the sofa next to him, looking around at the carnage of his living room, trying not to let the judgement hurt. The silence lingers between them for a minute, suspended: then Nolan huffs out a breath, not quite a sigh. When Travis opens his eyes, Nolan is staring at him, looking for all things, _ concerned. _

“Hey,” Nolan says. Quiet.

“Hi,” Travis croaks. He isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do. If it’s just pity that bought Nolan here, or something else. If he should be apologizing. In the end though, Nolan does the work for him. 

He says, “I’m sorry Travis.” 

He says _ I’m sorry_, and _ I'm still mad, _ and _ I was talking to my mom. _

**Nolan**

Nolan doesn’t mean to avoid Travis as long as he does. At first he really is too mad to see him, so he focuses on hockey and not the glaring hole where Travis is meant to be, and after a few days he finally feels like he could have a conversation without getting too pissed off. But then Travis goes and fucks up his foot, probably while high, and Nolan gets mad all over again. 

*

So it’s almost two weeks without Travis, focusing on hockey and hockey and very much not the way all the guys on the team are watching him, like they're waiting for him to say something. Start yelling. _ Something_. Nolan feels a little like a half-dead bug under a magnifying glass, and he doesn’t like being poked with the proverbial stick. Not seeing Travis is getting pretty old anyway, and the longer Nolan puts off talking to him, the more awkward he’s making it. He’s barely angry anymore, anyway. Just sort of...resigned. Tired. Travis is Travis. So what if he forgot dinner? Nolan knows what he’s like, so really it’s a little bit his fault too, for not reminding him beforehand. For not checking if he still remembered something they planned ages ago. 

They still need to talk about the coke though. It’s so fucking dumb, and Nolan really really doesn’t get it, but maybe he can understand. If it’s not a social thing, not a party thing, then what’s the point? Nolan doesn’t know much about addiction, but if he’s only ever doing it when they go out, and even then only when he has the opportunity to (when Nolan is willing to stay out late), he doesn’t think that suggests addiction. He’s just not sure what it does suggest, though. 

*

He’s facetiming his mom one day, giving her updates on his life, on what he’s eating, on hockey. 

“And Travis?” she asks finally, something that had clearly been on her mind. 

Still, Nolan isn’t going to give it away that easy. “What about him?”

“Don’t play stupid,” she says, rolling her eyes, “I know you two are joint at the hip. How is he? I heard he hurt his foot. I can’t imagine he’ll like sitting around waiting for it to heal.”

“Nobody does,” he says, not addressing the rest. 

“Well sure, honey. But for someone like him, well - it can’t be easy for him.”

Nolan stares at her through the phone, uncomprehending. “Like him?”

“Well, I’ve only met him a few times,” she says, hesitating as she realizes he really doesn’t know what she’s talking about. “I just assumed - I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. But you remember your cousin Andrew, right?”

Nolan does remember him. It’s been a good while since he last saw Andrew and his brothers, definitely not since they were kids, but he can remember Andrew pretty clearly. A couple of years older than Nolan, and pretty much always in trouble at school, he’d been fun to hang out with, but exhausting. Like he was running on a motor, always moving or talking or picking at the threads in his shirts while he told everyone about the cool dead bird he’d seen outside. Sometimes he forgot something you said to him like three seconds later, and for a little while Nolan thought it was just a great trick he was using to avoid getting yelled at for not doing chores, but then his mom explained that Andrew had ADHD, and that he was just like that, and no, that would not get him out of doing his own chores. 

On the phone to his mom, having an echo of the same conversation almost a decade later, Nolan thinks, _ oh shit_. 

**Travis**

Nolan says a lot of weird shit to Travis. Things like, _ do you think I have good taste in decor_, and _ what is quinoa made of,_ and one time out of nowhere, literally half way through a handy: _ you smell good. _ But apologizing for getting mad that _Travis_ fucked up and then speeding through a list of reasons why he probably has a developmental disorder probably takes the cake. The following conversation is mostly Travis protesting that he’d _ know _ if he had ADHD, he’s seen TV, he knows what kids with ADHD are like, and maybe he’s never seen an adult with it, but surely it isn’t much different?

But it is, as it turns out. Nolan lays out a list of things Travis does that fit, things that Travis thought were just _ him,_ just him being a dumbass, being forgetful, whatever. But the more he says, the more Travis like, gets it. Apparently it’s different for everyone, not the same thing between kids and adults at all. Nolan says _ physical pain with rejection _ and _ impaired memory _ and _ impulsiveness_, and Travis thinks _ oh _ and _ oh _ and _ oh _again. 

He also says something about self-medicating and rates of substance abuse that makes Travis wants to shrivel up and die, but his voice is still that same soothing monotone as he says it, no judgement, and Travis starts to think that maybe Nolan really doesn’t hate him still. He really actually might have forgiven him for the hundredth time, and then instead of letting Travis stew in it like maybe he deserved, Nolan spent an entire night researching all this stuff for him. Bought him takeout and told him in bullet points why Travis is an idiot, sure, but he’s not just inherently stupid. He might have this thing that makes him like he is, and it might be why he did any number of things since he was a kid, but it's chill.

Travis very almost fucked up their friendship and his career and his body, and shit, he might do it again still, but Nolan has laid the gift of a reason for it all at his feet; like he’s Jesus and Nolan’s bringing him aftershave and gold chains and smelling salts, except _ better. _The feeling suffusing through his body as he really understands what this could mean is fucking potent. Like the squirming hurting thing inside him is realizing that he isn’t just stupid and inherently bad. That maybe the blame isn’t always on him, within him. Maybe he can even see a doctor, and they can help him work on his shit. Travis hisses out a breath, feeling like an entire life-time’s worth of confusion and inadequacies are going with it. 

Nolan must sense that he’s sort of blown Travis’ mind, because he starts fishing around in the takeout bag and pulling out food, swapping out the empty cans on the table for the food containers. 

“Fish or chicken?” he says finally, but Travis is busy thinking that this is probably the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for him. He says as much, blurting it out. Catching his tongue between his teeth just a second too late. Nolan stares for a second, then looks down at the food. 

“I get us takeout like twice a week.” 

_ What an idiot_, Travis thinks_. _Except not really, because Nolan was the one that brought him food and research, stayed with him on the nights he did coke and coke and nothing else, helped him pick out stuff for his apartment and googled how to clean his oven the third time he melted something in it. Nolan makes sure he doesn’t forget anything in the hotel rooms when they’re on the road, and if that isn't love, Travis isn't sure he knows what is. So maybe Nolan just can’t say it. Maybe Travis has to.

And sure, there are a lot of things Travis is bad at, but saying whatever he’s thinking consequences be damned - isn’t one of them.


End file.
